Xidi - A Village Like A Beautiful Chinese Painting

Located in Yixian County, some 70 kilometers north-west of Tunxi, Xidi (a famous travel destination for top 10 China tours) is a picturesque village set in a lush valley against the backdrop of the Luo mountains. Along with the nearby village of Hongcun, Xidi was declared a part of the ‘Ancient Villages of Southern Anhui’ World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2000 for its well-preserved examples of Hui Architecture from Ming and Qing dynasties and its picture-postcard Chinese landscape scenery.

There are 320 Ming and Qing dynasty residences remaining in the village, 124 of which are still in good condition, and visitors have the chance to enter some of the more well-restored homes and public buildings as part of the ‘assigned housing programme’ the village operates. There is a 80 yuan entrance fee to the village, a proportion of which goes directly to the residents who open their houses to the public.

The village is designed in the shape of a ship as advised by a fengshui master when it was built over 1000 years ago. It is a maze of long, narrow alleys, upturned copings and white-washed walls. Xidi has one main road which runs from east to west flanked by two parallel streets, all joined together by side streets and alleyways. Small pockets of open space are confined to areas immediately in front of public buildings, and the streets are usually bustling with vendors selling snacks, wooden carvings and other assorted touristic trinkets. Xidi is also extremely popular with art students, who set up their easels all over town to sketch village scene, stone streets and the rapeseed flowers in bloom.

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